OceanBox - A big data approach to more data driven fisheries selectivity and fisheries management

Offentlig prosjektsammendrag

The OceanBox project aims to promote wider use of fisheries data by providing specific software services and science-based data products, ensuring trust and contributing to industry-science collaboration. It provides valuable services to private companies seeking to improve their efficiency while promoting responsible fishing. As more attention is paid worldwide to the sustainable use of our oceans, we are seeing an increasing demand for fishing companies to demonstrate corporate social responsibility (CSR) in order to maintain their existing fishing licenses or obtain new ones. The goal of the OceanBox project is to improve the knowledge base on pelagic fish stocks with sensor data from the industry for both the fisheries management advisory process and the fisheries selectivity process. In this way, the pelagic fisheries sector aims to be a model for the development of many (data-poor) fisheries to maintain its "license to fish" in existing fisheries, and to create sustainable fishing opportunities in potentially new areas. In this way, it contributes to both UN Goal 2 (no hunger) and Goal 14 (sustainable use of marine resources). To truly understand the dynamics of fish stocks, OceanBox leverages the data and knowledge of fishermen. Especially when multiple vessels operate as a fleet, OceanBox builds and shares data across the fleet, which greatly contributes to the observation radius of the fleet as a whole. Not only would the fleet be able to locate the target fish faster, reducing unwanted catches and saving fuel, but the vast amount of data would also contribute to a database that could be used for better fisheries management. The project shows that by providing operational advantages in the fishery, fishing companies are more successful in taking a better level of sustainable decision making. Solutions like the OceanBox will therefore become less dependent on subsidies and more likely to survive in times (and countries) of less sustainability awareness.